


sweet salt

by gaidinlait



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Hurt Spencer Reid, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Worried Derek Morgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:59:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26519395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaidinlait/pseuds/gaidinlait
Summary: it wasn't much of a spiritual life you were coming back to in Quantico, Virginia; but the first time you hear Spencer Reid laugh you decide that out of everything written in shaky cursive in your Sunday School notebook about God and sin, and mercy that had to be earned, it wasn't that hard to make peace with the belief that angels were real.(pov derek morgan// i also kind of went off on gideon in this one, not sorry)
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Comments: 15
Kudos: 130





	sweet salt

**Author's Note:**

> first work in criminal minds les getittt

You never thought of god as more than this: a force you'll never see, and smooth cold marble under your fingers when you'd touch Jesus on the cross as a kid and ask to see Dad asleep in his armchair when you're back home from mass, and feel that same cold on the armchair cushion when you'd climb in it, otherwise vacant.

-

It wasn't much of a spiritual life you carved out for yourself under the pale blue of the capital's sky- an apartment with dark walls and a bed in the middle of the room you rarely slept in, and never alone, when you did. Splotches of paint for pictures, orderly closet, bookshelves mostly for decoration and a well-read bible on one of them that was more a gift from your mother than a need for a silver lining, in your line of work. 

Even religion was perverted, calls for love twisted into selfish need fulfillment for empty people you spent the last fifteen years putting behind bars, crosses hanging from their necks and not burning their skin, somehow. 

It wasn't much of a spiritual life you were coming back to in Quantico, Virginia; but the first time you hear Spencer Reid laugh you decide that out of everything written in shaky cursive in your Sunday School notebook about God and sin, and mercy that had to be earned, it wasn't that hard to make peace with the belief that angels were real. 

He'd thrown his head back and bared his teeth and his hair shook where it fell on his shoulders and you caught yourself thinking about it slipping from your fingers, when the last of the airy sound fades in the gray of a half-empty bullpen and he turns to you, his eyes watery, and wipes the sweet salt with the back of his hand by the time you realize, like he did before you - like he _always_ realized everything before everyone else - that you're staring. 

_What are you laughing for, pretty boy,_ you ask to save face and his cheeks tint a pretty pink at the nickname and somewhere at the back of your mind you think that makes you even.

(That same somewhere decides for you to call him that, from now on, and you don't have the time to question it.)

-

_A miracle,_ Gideon introduced him as that when he brought him in first, waving off Hotch's skepticism and your own raised eyebrow, and the three of you look at the newest addition to a team of people with complicated pasts as he fumbles with the clip of his ID. You wonder for yourself what kind of a past could fit in twenty one years to bring a kid here. 

(You wonder, but you don't ask, somehow you think that you're better off not knowing.)

_A miracle, I'm telling you,_ Gideon assures everyone in the precinct when the kid leaves to get his coffee after solving a murder-suicide case almost entirely on his own by recalling a similar case a decade older than him and from a small town a thousand miles westward, reciting the details like he's reading them right off of the sheriff's forehead. 

You suspect that Gideon keeps using metaphors to talk of him because calling him by his name meant admitting he was human in spite of his mind, only twenty one and clearly out of place here- not for lack of skill, but for everything else. 

You decide then to call him kid as well, to spite Gideon as much as it was to remind yourself that twenty one years wasn't even close to old enough to chase death till it sends for you. 

(Not without anger, you think that Gideon already knew that.) 

-

Gravel sounds comforting when crunching under your heavy-duty boots but it's not much of a driveway- not your style, anyways. Neither are the protruding walls that are boxing the kitchen in from natural light. 

You picked up property remodeling around the same time Reid picked up the habit of trading sleep and water for heavily sugared coffee.

You picked up the sledgehammer and took swings at walls because your fist would be connecting with them otherwise, like that one time in a hotel room in Fresno when a unit chief nearly had Reid and himself killed by not letting _the weird kid_ drive and ending up with the SUV banged up and flipped on its roof in a ditch by the road and you had to sit by _the weird kid's_ bed until four in the morning when he finally came to. 

And when you drove him back to the hotel with both of your hands gripping the wheel and to your shared room, he admitted in a quiet voice that the unit chief smelled of booze and locked the doors when Reid tried to get out of the car and hitch a ride with anyone else, but didn't insist cause he _didn't want to make a scene_. He ends up asking you, in that same quiet voice, not to tell Hotch about it as he dabs antiseptic onto your knuckles and offers a weary sigh to the hole in the green-gold plaster wall that your fist left. 

(You realized much too late into the morning and when Reid was already asleep, that he thought you were angry with _him._ You almost add to the wall decor but you opt out because you don't want to wake Reid up.) 

( _The walls were ugly anyways,_ you think an hour later, the colors were the wrong shades and failed to not look like cat vomit. You wish you had your sledgehammer. For the wall, of course.)

(The unit chief is nowhere to be seen all the while you help pack up the case files to leave. Someone must've advised him against showing face until you've all left. Reid avoids your eyes the whole time.)

-

The case was hard, this latest one, and you were about ready to tune all of the team out and fall asleep to the jazz record your sister swore by and bought for you this Christmas. You only really listen to it because you miss her. 

But Reid is sat opposite of Gideon in the corner of the jet and frowning at the board between them, almost like he's ready to give up. 

"He's got him beat four times," Emily supplies from the seat across from you, and you roll your eyes without really wanting to. 

"The kid doesn't even play chess. He's supposed to be _teaching_ him."

 _This was just beating him till Reid manages to teach himself, on his own. As if the kid had any more proving to do._

The frown doesn't leave Reid's face and deepens at another loss and you think you kind of hate Gideon for it. 

Emily looks at you like she doesn't get it, but to her credit at least she seems like she wants to. So you pull out a crosswords puzzle. 

"A little help here, pretty boy?" 

The look of relief on his face right then cements your opinion on the bureau legend left staring at the board before him. Reid sits on the table and slouches over you and doesn't comment on the fact that you clearly weren't doing the puzzle before calling him over. You don't comment on the way he's bouncing his leg, in return. 

"Twelve letters. 'Someone you're talking to'."

Reid looks stumped, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second. You try not to look too impressed for the millionth time, by the walking library of Alexandria that deemed you worth the effort. You try not to look too enamored, either, and Emily pretends to buy it, for your sakes. 

_Maybe she kind of gets it._

"I'll give you a hint- it begins the same as anything that's connecting two different things, on the inside."

 _Interstate highway,_ you think, _that Reid almost died on that time in Fresno._

Inter is all you say, after a few seconds, and Reid looks excited for you over it. You wonder, for the millionth time, why it was so hard for Jason Gideon to do the same for him. 

"Yeah! Interlocutor, is the full word. You want to do the rest of them?" he says and there's a sliver of hope in his voice - that he's not being overbearing, that he'll be saved from another humiliating chess game with the man he practically imprinted on back in the Academy - you scoot over before Reid can misread your hesitation as anything other but anger.

"Sure thing, kid."

Kid ends up falling asleep after the while he's spent hunched over the desk, scribbling in pen all perfect solutions to the puzzles long after you've given up on trying to follow his logic behind getting it right the entire time. 

You pull him up to lean on the backrest and instead he falls onto you, a heap of sharp edges and pale skin and his long hair a mess that tickles your chin when you give in, embarrassingly easily, and let him sleep on your chest, pointedly ignoring both the smirk Emily has on and the way your heart stutters when Reid weakly grabs a fistful of your henley in his sleep. 

-

If hell exists, you think, and it's not looking through the screen as Reid is being tortured by this _sick_ man and wincing at the word of a god that you don't recognize as he's punished by it, then you don't care if you end up in it. 

If hell exists and it's not the feeling that latches onto your ribs from within when you look Reid in the eyes and see _hollow_ , see _pain_ and _dark_ and _nothing_ , and the feeling stays even when you've burned that shed to the ground and watched over him till he woke up in a hospital again, then it better find itself another name. 

_Morgan,_ he rasps and refuses the water, his eyes already closing again, _my mom will be worried that I didn't call._

Then he passes out and you could cry, at the sunken look to his face and how his hand was stone-cold in yours when you phoned Diana Reid with the other and lied through your teeth about a lost cell phone and a tough case. 

-

_The tiles here could use some work,_ you notice and can't help but sound deranged even to yourself, _because they're off-white and the walls don't match the way they could if they were tinted._

The ambulance is minutes away and Reid is shaking in your arms like a gust of wind could pull him apart and when he pleads, illogical, desperate, with what could've been his last words, _don't tell Gideon, please_ , you have to refocus on the tiles and your hand in Reid's frail hair to stop yourself from crushing the empty vials by your right foot on his bathroom floor and pouring the shards into Gideon's eyes so he can see for himself, without being told, what good his advice does. 

They have to force you to let go of Reid when they barge into his apartment and you have to force the bile back down your throat when he flatlines twice on the way to Mary Washington. 

_Did you try to leave us tonight_ , you want to ask when he's finally awake and so is Hotch, at six in the morning, agreeing over the phone to a week long leave for you both. 

_Where's your head, kid._ Or, _you fucking scared me._

"How are you feeling?" 

Reid looks at you like he's never seen you before, like you weren't, for the seventh time this side of june, sleeping in a plastic chair by his bedside like it was a birthright to worry yourself sick about him. Like it was _his_ birthright to dance with death so many times and leave some of himself with it when the music ends. 

"I wanted to die, Morgan."

It's a whisper, realistically you almost would've missed it. But it's as clear and loud of a sound as brass bells in your ears, and it cuts to the bone when Reid heaves a tired sigh and you realize - always _after_ he did - that your face is wet. 

(You pull your own sweater over his head when he still shivers under three layers of shirts and doesn't stop until that night, when you wake him up from a night terror and he looks guilty when he almost _supplicates_ you hold him so he doesn't have to face Hankel's ghost alone, this time.)

-

It takes a few weeks till you stop, on reflex, defiling his every move after he comes out of a bathroom or walks into the office alone. 

(After all, he did give you a spare key to his apartment for a reason. _Chekhov's gun,_ he said when he slid it on your desk towards you, and you were too busy balancing the coffee orders to think about it.)

It takes a few more weeks until his eyes somewhat shine again and maybe his jokes are darker now, but they're jokes, and there's Reid, looking at you differently. You think that he'll look in the face of god that way one of these days, and explain to him things the way he does again to LEO's when he's back from his leave. 

(Gideon looks proud, when Reid comes back to them, new but still himself. You buy another property, hopeless and ugly by the edge of the highway and knock all of its inner walls out by the time the seething that pulsates beneath your fingernails stops biting like acid would.)

-

Gideon leaves the team and a note for _Spencer_ back in his cabin, because he knew the kid would go looking for him, despite it all. Like a last play of power, last show of arrogant love- taking and never giving, he left Reid after Reid got good at beating him in chess and you think it a good thing in the long run. 

And no one can do anything about it, least of all Reid- there are no chess strategies to play against a coward. Reid looks a bit lost, and dazed, the first few weeks, and when he lets you read the note for the first time seven months after Gideon has left, the old rage you locked away like a deadly virus bares its teeth again; when you open the yellowed paper and the first thing you notice is the smeared spots at the bottom from tears that weren't Gideon's, you wish for a moment in time for him to end up in hell. 

You give him the note back even if you both know that Reid remembers it. You give him a hug, too, and he yields to you then like he rarely does- it's evening and you're leaning against the front door of his apartment and he's wrapped his arms around you but it's not desperate: this time, it's like he doesn't mind you there. 

_You can stay, if you want to,_ he says into your shirt so you don't see him blush, but you've already toed your shoes off. An easy smile, lips pulled over his teeth when he parts from the hug- you know like you've always known but never admitted, that you want to kiss him, but it's the evening in Quantico, Virginia; the last of the sun catches in his hair like it's vitrage glass hugged between keystones and windowsills at St. James back in Chicago, and you're not worthy of an angel.

It's enough to sit on his old beige sofa on a blanket that smelled like him and nearly trip on stacks of books that went up to your hip and meant he wasn't sleeping well. He emerges from the kitchen you want so badly to redo when you've both got time off work, and brings you peach tea like his own is. You watch as he rips open a honey packet to squeeze into the cooling, rosy drink and some of it sticks to the tips of his supple fingers; and when he innocently brings them up and past his lips to lick them clean, you turn away before he can look up and realize before you- again- that you would live and die loving him. That he doesn't even have to know. 

_He won't_ , you decide solemnly for you both, and your tea had almost gone cold by the time your fingers stopped shaking enough for you to pick the mug up and not spill all of what's in it. 

But you're shaken to the core by the realization as it steadily hits you, and sitting in his living room while he reads Sholokhov for what has to be the seventeenth time suddenly makes it so that all the air has left the dimly lit room and you clamber for the window to aid it. 

You turn to see Reid looking up at you, his book closed over his finger to be picked up again once he's found whatever he's looking for on your face, and just as the cool air starts to set in and fold at the bottom of your lungs in comfort, he drops the book and crosses the room in two strides to kiss that air out of you, his hands on your shoulders, mouth sliding against yours like messy brush strokes, and you have to force yourself to breathe. 

The plush red of his lips tastes like honeyed tea and his eyes are even bigger from this close up and you think back to what he wants you to realize, what he tried to get you to understand, all those months ago, because he was a genius, after all. 

It clicks moments after and as loud as a fired bullet does and you understand, _you understand._

The spare key burns in your back pocket, and you don't even think twice about taking his face firmly in both of your hands and holding him still for another kiss before he can start looking smug about himself.

(He holds onto your shoulders even in bed and laughs when you mention how the bathroom tiles don't match his walls too well. His skin is paler than the marble and just as smooth under your fingers but not at all cold, and when you cup his neck as he laughs, you try but can't think of a prayer to say that he didn't answer already.)

**Author's Note:**

> do leave comments and/or kudos if you want me to write more! i love the dynamics potential these two have


End file.
